HMRC has started writing to nearly 800,000 people who were self-employed at any point between 2015 and 2024, warning them their National Insurance record may have gaps that could reduce their eventual State Pension by thousands of pounds. The letters began arriving in July and are going out in stages — those closest to State Pension age first, everyone else from spring 2027. If you run a business as a sole trader, or have done at any point in the last decade, this is worth your attention even if you’ve never received one of these letters yet.
The underlying issue is an HMRC error, not something affected taxpayers did wrong: incorrectly recorded gaps in Class 2 National Insurance contributions during that period. The letters give people the chance to check their record and, where there’s a genuine shortfall, fill missing qualifying years before it affects what they receive in retirement.
Why this is worth flagging to your team, not just yourself
If you employ contractors, freelancers, or anyone who has been self-employed in the past ten years, it’s worth a quiet heads-up that these letters are genuine and worth acting on — not deleting as spam, and not ignoring as “HMRC admin that can wait.” A missed correction window here isn’t a fine or a filing headache; it’s a permanent dent in someone’s pension that can be several thousand pounds.
It’s also, predictably, the kind of genuine deadline that scam emails love to imitate. Whenever HMRC runs a large, real communication campaign like this one, a wave of look-alike phishing tends to follow within weeks — messages claiming your National Insurance number has been compromised, or demanding urgent payment to “protect” your record.
There’s a second, quieter risk too: because the genuine letters arrive by post and the process to fix a gap can involve paying voluntary contributions, scammers have an easy template to copy — a plausible-sounding letter or call referencing a real HMRC process, asking for a payment to “top up” a record over the phone. HMRC will never ask for a card payment over the phone as the only way to fix this; the genuine route is always through your account at GOV.UK, where you can see exactly what’s owed and pay through the normal, verified process.
How to tell the real thing from a copy
HMRC sends this by letter, not email or text. If something claiming to be about National Insurance gaps arrives by email, text, or as an urgent phone call, treat it as suspicious by default.
Genuine HMRC communication never asks for bank details by text or email. It points you to log in at GOV.UK directly, not through a link embedded in a message.
Threats of arrest or immediate account freezing are a scam tell, not an HMRC one. This process is about fixing a pension shortfall, not enforcement — there’s no genuine version of this letter that comes with urgent threats attached.
When in doubt, go direct. Check your National Insurance record by logging in to your Personal Tax Account at gov.uk yourself, typed in rather than clicked through, rather than trusting any link in an unsolicited message.
If your business handles a lot of official correspondence for staff or contractors and you want a clearer process for spotting exactly this kind of impersonation before it lands on the wrong desk, KeepSafe monitors for targeted fraud like this as part of ongoing incident monitoring.
The takeaway
If you’ve ever been self-employed since 2015, it’s worth checking your National Insurance record directly at GOV.UK rather than waiting for a letter that may take until 2027 to arrive. And if anything claiming to be about this lands in an inbox rather than a postbox, treat it as a scam until proven otherwise.
